Early English
retailing was performed from travelling fairs, travelling from town to town,
often appearing in any one location on a weekly basis. There were no
‘shops’ as we see them today; the English word ‘shop’ derives from the German
‘schuppe’, meaning a shed where goods were made (for later retailing in a
fair). This meaning of the word ‘shop’ is preserved in the terms ‘shopfloor’
and ‘workshop’. The word ‘schuppe’ is
related to the Saxon word ‘Chepe’, found today in place names like Cheapside
and Chipping Norton; ‘chepe’ meant ‘marketplace’, the place where workshop-made
goods were sold.From ‘chepe’ we get the
word ‘cheap’, and also the word ‘shopping’.

In those days, before the Industrial Revolution, most people
lived in the countryside and it was not
until 1851 that a majority of the UK population lived in towns and cities.Households could satisfy most of their needs
from their own production, growing their own food, perhaps making their own
clothes and furniture.However by the
1700s, some ‘schuppes’ around the fair or market place began selling goods
directly from the workshop premises. This development marked the start of modern
independent shops as we know them today.

The transformation of
retailing from mobile fair to fixed shop was largely completed by the 20th
century. The new factory workers of
the Industrial Revolution, living in cramped urban terraced accommodation, had
changed their shopping habits from a weekly visit to a fair to a daily trip to
the corner shop. Houses could be
converted, with effectively no planning restrictions, into corner shops. In the new terraced suburbs, corner houses
were more likely to see their front rooms turned into shops than mid-street
houses, because footfall was greatest on street corners.This
was the origin of the ‘corner shop’ independent grocery shop of today.

Meanwhile, 17th and 18th century
high-status family houses with gardens that had been erected along roads
leading out of town had declined in status as the countryside behind them
became urbanised.As the higher-income
families left these houses, tradesmen took them over, converted the front
garden into a shop, used the ground floor as a storage area and lived in the
floors above.This was the origin of many of today’s ‘shopping parades’, lining urban
main roads in UK cities.The former
gardens of these houses are now often either a single-storey front extension
used as a shop, or have been paved over and appear to form an extension of the
street pavement, perhaps used as a car-parking area.What
is today often refereed to as the ‘corner shop’ reached a peak in the 1950s in
terms of numbers.Link to current trends in small shops

The next section of this page reviews some of the
technological, economic, and political developments that have occurred in the
20th century as they impact the viability of small shops

2. Changes in UK planning
regulations

Changes in planning have had major effects on the location
and viability of small shops. The pre-World War One era of laissez-faire
planning gave way, after 1918, to a more centralised idea of how towns and
cities should develop.This was the
era of ‘garden cities’ such as Letchworth, with ‘homes fit for heroes’, the soldiers returning from the ‘Great War’
(World War One, 1914-1918).Such housing
replaced the deprived slum terraced housing of the Victorian era.This period of more controlled land usage
meant that shops could be no longer opened anywhere, converted from former
houses.Rather, land use was ‘zoned’,
and retail uses were concentrated in designated
suburban shopping centres and retail parades.

Central government, by keeping local authorities under tight
financial control, could ensure they toed the line regarding, for example,
allowing supermarket development on EZ or other derelict land. West Glamorgan Council, covering Swansea,
tried to prevent such out-of-town retailing development, to protect city centre
shops. However the council was threatened with loss of funds from central
government unless it complied.Gradually, over the latter decades of the
twentieth century, planning has come more under the control of central government. This mirrors a general
centralisation of functions such as health, education, and transport away from
local towards central government. Local authorities, faced with a proposal they
didn’t want, scarcely dared to reject it because the developer would appeal,
and if they won, the local authority would be faced with expensive legal bills.
The local authority had one weapon
remaining; to delay the application in the hope the developer would give up and
go away, perhaps as local economic conditions changed. Local environmental
protesters could also impose long delays. This now may change as New Labour is speeding
up the planning process, because of complaints of long delays by developers and
investors.

This socially
oriented centralised planning partly reverted, after the Conservative election
victory of 1979, back to a more free-enterprise-based approach, under Mrs
Thatcher. Deindustrialisation left
large sites on the edge of northern cities which were declared, by the Thatcher
government, as Enterprise Zones
(EZs) where planning controls were minimal and tax and rates low. The first retailers to set up on these
EZswere furniture, DIY, and carpet
stores; shops requiring large showrooms and vehicular access for customers. These requirements were expensive in congested
town centres. However by the late 1980s High Street ‘anchor stores’ like Marks and
Spencer, John Lewis, Laura Ashley, and Habitat began to move to these
out-of-town retail parks too, abandoning their former High Street locations.

There were many
advantages t the big retailers in moving from the High Street to EZ locations.Road connections were good, facilitating
‘just in time’ (kanban) warehouse stocking; in turn this meant less requirement
for expensive warehousing space, and greater flexibility in what goods are
stocked at what time of day.The larger
premises gave greater economies of scale, and this gave enhanced buying power over
a host of smaller suppliers.Customers
liked the free parking and one-stop shopping, although they had to drive
further to reach these large supermarkets.

In the 1990s,
government attitude towards large out-of-town supermarkets cooled, as they
were seen as a cause of traffic congestion and increased CO2
emissions. John major issued the PPG
(Policy Planning and Guidance) series – PPG3 dealt with housing, and PPG6 dealt
with retailing, for example. The idea
was to redirect development back to urban and brownfield sites.

A major worry for both the discount chains and those
supporting small independent retailers was that supermarkets could exploit a
planning law loophole to double their floor area. Planning permission is not
normally required for alterations that do not extend the outside of the
building or alter its appearance.So
supermarkets, with ceilings often some 7 metres or more above floor level,
could insert an extra floor,
doubling their sales area and hence increasing their economies of scale,
further undercutting smaller stores. The extra floorspace would have been
likely used for non-food goods such as electronics and clothes, further
undermining sectors of the High Street where the supermarkets have as yet
(2004) made less penetration. By March 2004 some supermarkets had already
inserted this floor but in that month the UK government announced that the
Planning Bill then before the Lords was to be amended to close this loophole.

3.2) The sequential test, town
centres before out-of-town sites

However the 1996 PPG6 guidelines imposed a ‘sequential test’ regarding the building
of a new retail premises, or an extension to an existing shop. Basically, the
question was, could this floorspace be provided in the town centre (perhaps as
a number of smaller units centrally rather than one unit in the suburbs)?If not, could it be provided on the edge of
the town centre? Only if not here either, should planning permission for the
new shop or extension be granted in an out-of-town setting. In 2004 the Labour
Chancellor, Gordon Brown, under pressure from major retailers and despite
opposition from the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, began to alter the
rules. Extensions e.g. to large supermarkets could be exempted altogether from the ‘sequential
test’.Furthermore, if a large
retailer could show that there was no room for its proposed large new premises
near the town centre, yet not allowing it to be built would deprive the local
customer base of cheaper prices gained through economies of scale, then the
proposed large new shop should be allowed to be built further out. Of course
there will seldom be space available for large new retail premises near town
centres; out on the by-pass will be the only available site, just where the
retailer wants to be.

3.3) The impact test, is there a
need / demand for a new supermarket?

A White Paper, published in May 2007, changed the ‘sequential
test’ to an ‘impact test’ or ‘needs test’, requiring local
authorities to have a business plan that allowed for consumer demand in both
High Street and out of town settings.This could make it easier for supermarkets to gain permission for out of
town stores, if they can show the town centre should remain viable even with
the new development.As a rough rule, it
was estimated that there was a ‘need’ for one supermarket per 50,000 people.

3.4) The competition test;
discriminating between planning applicants

In 2008 the
Competition Commission proposed dropping the needs or impact test in
favour of a competition test.This means that applications from
supermarkets under-represented in an area could be favoured over those from a
supermarket which already has a large local market share.This would involve a fundamental shift in an
underlying principle of planning law, that applications for any particular land
use or development should be treated equally from all parties, or
companies.Under the competition test,
planners would be expected to favour an application to build a new supermarket
from a company with fewer stores already in the area.Tesco has objected; as market leader, it will
be disadvantaged, gain fewer successful applications than smaller chains like
Morrison.Tesco may be forced to sell
sites in its land bank, land held by Tesco where competitors might be able to
build a supermarket, to other retail chains.Small shopkeepers are also unhappy as the net outcome may be not one
supermarket, a Tesco say, but several competing for trade with the smaller
independents.This is an interesting
case of Tesco and the small independent shopkeepers being on the same side of
the debate, albeit for rather different reasons.

In 2009 Tesco won an
appeal at the Competition Appeals Tribunal against the implementation of the
proposed competition test.The CAT
said the new test was too cumbersome and bureaucratic and could restrict
investment at a time of economic slowdown.

3.5) Use of space above the shop

Use of space above
shops could benefit local retailing in several ways.Besides providing an additional source of
rental income, there would be a local consumer market, plus the security of
having the area inhabited at all times, possibly deterring burglary and
vandalism.However planners, and property agents, have several reasons to be wary
of mixed land uses, that is, office, retail, and residential uses all in
the same building. Property agents
desire ‘institutional’ leases; that is, one tenant, long-term, upwards-only,
rent reviews. Having mixed uses means
the likelihood of voids of parts of the property for some periods, and perhaps
new tenants negotiating a lease below what the previous tenant was paying. There may be increased risk of property damage
if residential use is above offices, for example, baths overflowing and
damaging computer equipment in offices below, or fire risk from cooking. There
is a perception of greater security risk if office premises cannot be totally
secured at night because residents are coming and going. And planners have since the 1960s at least
tended to like to ‘tidy up’ land uses, having areas for one use only,
residential, office, industrial, or commercial, bit not many uses together.
There may be a safety implication if commercial vehicles are moving in the same
area as residents, with children, are moving about. Residents may complain of noise from
commercial vehicles or smells from food outlets.On the other hand, having residential use
mixed in with commercial may improve security for the offices and shops, as it
prevents ‘dead areas’ emerging at night, devoid of people. City centres where
nobody lives can be menacing places after dark, whereas cities with residents
in flats above shops and even offices retain vitality; commercial uses from
pubs to late night shops thrive, and the area becomes self-policing to an
extent.

Shops often have
accommodation above them. Older
shops were originally houses, and shops in 1950s parades often were built with
flats above. Often flats over older
shops are quite spacious, and cheaper than flats of comparable size elsewhere. This is because they may be seen as
down-market. Particularly in High Street locations, people do not want to live
there, because of fears of noise, traffic, and rowdiness. There will likely be
no garden, difficult access, by stairs only, and parking may be problematic. If the council owns the shops, and the flat
above, and the tenants are on Housing Benefit, the council sees little profit
in renting because it ends up paying a part of its own rent. As it is the
poorer tenants who may rent these flats, this is quite likely.

3.6 Access for the disabled

The Disability
Discrimination Act required all commercial areas, office, retail, public
buildings, to be wheelchair-accessible by 2004.
Space above shops is often not
accessible to wheelchairs at all, and this could preclude an office use, though
not a residential one. Some have
suggested having small local police stations over shops, to improve High Street
security. There is a church over a Lancashire shop, dog owner meetings over a
Devon shop, and a pub in Derbyshire has received a £42,000 EU grant to start
computer classes upstairsThe main
attraction for use of space over shops could be to avoid urban sprawl, which
was why John Major, Conservative PM, issued the PPG series of planning
documents. There are now Living Over The
Shop (LOTS) initiatives, the first of which was implemented in Stamford,
Lincolnshire, where three previously homeless families were housed over shops
there. On a larger scale, supermarkets
are starting to use the space above their premises for flat developments. Asda is developing flats over its Romford
(east London) store, in conjunction with Barratt Homes, and Sainsbury in
Richmond (London) and Tesco in Streatham (London) are also being built with
flats up to twelve floors high over the store.

4. Globalisation
and increasing inequality

Global communications improved markedly through the
1960s, 70s, and 80s, both electronically and physically. Telecommunications changed beyond recognition,
the Internet developed, and computing power and speed increased vastly. Shipping became containerised, motorways
reduced road transit times by hours or even days, and air travel also expanded.
This benefited companies in several
ways. With wider communications, wider spread of advertising through such media
as television, and greater economic prosperity through general economic growth,
there were huge economies of scale to be had. For the successful, a virtuous circle could be
set up of greater corporate expansion, lower prices yet greater profits through
economies of scale, greater market chare, and yet more expansion. The major
supermarkets have demonstrated just how powerful such a virtuous circle can be.

However such a strategy depends on continued expansion.
This means smaller fry must be squeezed
out, taken over or driven out of business, especially in a market of largely
fixed size such as food. Many smaller
supermarkets, and a huge number of independent convenience stores in the UK,
have vanished. As companies grow ever
larger, they acquire considerable buying power. When a customer takes a
large proportion of the output of a producer, the customer begins to be able to
dictate the price they will pay the producer. UK farms are increasingly being told what
price they can expect and what quality food they must produce by the major
supermarkets. Economists call this ‘oligopsony’. This term is rather like its more familiar
variant, monopoly. But whereas in
mono-poly (literally, ‘one-seller), there is only one supplier for the market,
oligopsony means ‘few-buyers’. Oligopsonists
have similar power to monopolists as regards manipulating the market, but
because there are several parties involved, a complex area of economics called game theory has evolved to analyse
this situation.

The outcome is a small group of very large companies
controlling a large section of their market, and competing fiercely on price,
as do the largest supermarkets in Britain today. Besides exercising their buying power, large
companies have two more ways of offering lower prices, to perpetuate their
expansion and continued gains of economy of scale (if they fail, and begin to
lose some market share to a competitor, the virtuous circle collapses; their
costs are now above their competitor, who can further undercut their price). Companies can locate production overseas,
where wages are a fraction of European or USA levels. Improved global
communications help here, with both trans-shipping the goods and with
controlling remote subsidiaries or suppliers that are nominally independent
(but still dependent to the main manufacturer for most or all of their trade).

Large companies also have considerable political power
even in Western countries. The threat is
that they will cut back investment and jobs in a country whose policies do not
suit them. Because the West has lost
many jobs to lower wage countries, and governments can lose elections if
unemployment is rising, the Western government will likely try and accommodate
these corporations, even if what they demand is very different from the
prospectus the government was originally elected upon. Electors remember job losses and recessions
far better than broken election promises, and blame governments, not footloose
corporations. Western governments are
then faced with a major fiscal dilemma. They
face both falling tax revenuebut if
they don’t play ball with the corporations and reduce taxes, unemployment will
soar and the fiscal situation will be even worse.

Since tax revenue cannot be raised from the large
corporations, it must come from somewhere else. Higher income tax may just drive the highest
earners overseas to domicile in tax havens.One solution is to shift tax from
direct (income tax) to indirect (VAT and other purchase taxes
such as on fuel and alcohol).This
ultimately means the poor pay more, as they spend a greater proportion of their
total income than the rich do of their income. The rise in indirect taxation contributed to a
rise in smuggling alcohol and cigarettes into the UK from mainland Europe for
resale, because duties on these items in Belgium and France are much lower. Local pubs, sometimes a mainstay of the local
community, lost trade and closed as alcohol was brought back and consumed at
home. Small shops, dependent on the
higher profits of alcohol and cigarettes to keep open, also lost trade and
closed.

5. Food technology
and social changes

Pre-technological
food production

Before the era of European world exploration (swiftly
followed by European colonial expansion), people in England and other European
countries were largely dependent on natural forces, the climate and ecology, as
to how much food they could produce.A
run of good years meant the carrying capacity of the land – the amount of
people it could support – rose, and usually the population rose to match.Then came a run of bad years, a climatic deterioration,
and famine and disease reduced the population to match the new lowered carrying
capacity.It was no coincidence that the
Black Death of the 14th century carried off so many, just as a
period of benign climate in the Middle Ages gave way to the Little Ice Age of
the 15th to the 18th centuries.

Colonial expansion
and food production

As Europeans voyaged abroad on missions of exploration, and
to find new resources, they discovered not just silver and gold but new foods
too.Potatoes arrived in Britain in
1586, brought back from South America.Trade routes were opened up by sea to the East Indies, or Spice Islands,
as land routes were cut off by expansion of the Ottoman Empire.Spices could make less palatable food, or
food that had deteriorated, still seem palatable, and so was effectively a way
of artificially raising the carrying capacity of the land.

The Renaissance, and later the Industrial Revolution,
brought about innovations in food production too.In 1701 Jethro Tull invented the seed drill
machine, improving farm productivity.1797 brought the cast iron plough, patented by Charles Newbold, and in
1833 an automatic grain reaping machine was developed by Cyrus Hall McCormick
in the USA.As farms became more
productive, more food could be produced with less workers, and rural labourers
found themselves increasingly out of work and under the threat of the workhouse
regime if they did not migrate to the rapidly growing towns and cities of the
Industrial Revolution.Rural to urban
migration was perhaps rarely undertaken voluntarily, for conditions, hard as
they were in the countryside, were probably preferable to a low-wage existence
in the slums of a 19th century industrial city.But such migration was often necessary for
sheer survival.Huge numbers of working
men, and their families, were separated from the land and their means of
survival and self-subsistence; their food came via developing supply chains
from ever moiré automated and technological farms.

Industrial Revolution
and the Corn Laws

Britain had enacted the Corn
Laws in 1833, which effectively set a floor price for bread.This price floor protected the aristocratic
land owners from losses should there be a bumper wheat harvest and the price of
wheat, and bread, then fell.But the
Corn Laws meant higher bread prices for the poor, as there was no equivalent
price ceiling should the harvest be meagre and prices rise.In 1846 the Corn Laws were scrapped and a
process of dismantling import duties ion whet coming into the UK began.The aristocracy were increasingly making
their money from industry and commerce, not agriculture, and the Corn Laws were
disruptive to factory production; they resulted in higher wage demand, and
possibly civil unrest if wages did not feed the workers’ families.

As Britain’s colonial
empire grew, the UK’s food was increasingly produced abroad, where labour
and land were cheaper.Britain produced
not so much food as factory goods.In
feeding itself from overseas, Britain was merely following the example of
earlier empires, such as Rome, who also found it economically effective to
import food to the political centre from colonies such as North Africa, the
breadbasket of Rome during the days of Empire.The British Navy ensured
continuity of supply, and the countries of South America, formerly Spanish
colonies until they achieved independence in the early 19th century,
now effectively became economic colonies of the UK.Argentine
produced beef far more cheaply than British farmers could, and this was
shipped to Europe.The technology of
shipping rapidly advanced, as steam propulsion replaced sail and iron hulls
replaced wooden ones.

Food technology and
the urbanisation of Britain

Other technologies also boosted food production and hence
the UK’s rapidly growing and rapidly urbanising population.In
1850 a landmark demographic change occurred in the UK; for the first time ever,
the number of Britons living in towns and cities exceeded 50% of the total
population.Britain had become
officially an urban nation.Self
raising flour was patented in 1845 by Henry Jones of Bristol (UK).In 1915 cornflakes were patented by Frank
Martin; this made what had been a rather unpalatable and indigestible food into
a cheap and tasty breakfast dish.In the USA, barbed wire enabled cattle to
be ranched on the Great Plains, where there was insufficient trees to make
wooden fences to keep the cows in fields.In turn, cattle ranching spurred on the growth of railways, market
towns, and the general continental development of the USA, and led, through
massive economies of scale, to the USA as a superpower of today.Even
tea played a key role, by effectively making the very idea of industrial cities
feasible.Before the Victorians
pioneered an effective urban sewerage system, the water supply of cities was
always dubious at best, plagued by waterborne diseases such as cholera.The death rate in Victorian industrial cities
would have been far higher, indeed far above the urban immigration and birth
rate, if people had drunk their water cold, not boiled so as to kill bacteria;
however hot water alone is rather unpalatable for most people.Tea from Japan had been known about in
Britain for centuries, but was very expensive and its consumption limited to
the wealthy.However tea from India was
far cheaper, and affordable by the poor.Indian tea alone was a major reason why Britain needed this particular
‘Jewel in the Crown of the Empire’.

Britain, World War
One, and food insecurity in the 20th century

Britain’s world
supremacy, politically and industrially, began to erode by the end of the 19th
century.Not only was America on the
rise, but other European countries, notably Germany, were also industrialising fast, and developing their
military, especially their navies, too.In 1910 a German chemist, Carl Bosch,
developed the Haber process for converting atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia.This was very important because ammonia could
be made into fertiliser, whereas in nature, only very limited conversion of the
70% of the atmosphere that is nitrogen into plant material can take place, via
lightning or via small clusters of plant root bacteria.

In 1914 the inevitable happened and the rising political
tensions in Europe, between the growing political-military power of nations
such as France, Germany, and Russia, and the older power of Britain, erupted
into World War One.The tinder spark was of course the relatively
insignificant political assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria
by a Serbian separatist, Gavril Princip, in June of that year.

World War One was to demonstrate the vulnerability of the
island nation of Britain to a dependence on imported foods from overseas.The British had blockaded food imports into
Germany, causing food shortages there, and ultimately causing the collapse of
Germany at the end of 1918, even after events had seemingly moved in Germany’s
favour in 1917 as the Russian Czarist regime collapsed and the new Communist
Russia made peace with Germany on the Eastern front.In 1917 Germany retaliated to the British
blockade by itself blockading food imports into the UK, using the new naval
innovation of the submarine, or U-boat (Unterzeeboot).

Electricity,
transport, and two World Wars

Meanwhile food related technology moved on.The end of the 19th century saw
major advances in the field of electricity in the USA, producing the so-called
‘electrical wave’ of electricity appliances, from light bulbs and irons to
fridges, freezers, and even electric cookers.The close of the First World War saw the British Army release onto the
open market huge numbers of now-surplus lorries.Road transport in Britain began to take off,
major trunk roads like the Liverpool to Manchester road and the Great West Way
were built, and rail transport entered a long decline, exacerbated by war
damage and manpower losses, culminating in the Beeching cuts of the 1960s.

World War One was supposed to be the ‘war to end all wars’,
and the League of Nations was set up to prevent such a major conflict ever happening
again.Hence Britain felt it could once
more rely on imported foodThe UK
government even felt it could afford to reduce imports of food from places such
as Denmark, Argentina, and Russia, in preference for food from the Colonial
Empire, and the Old Colonies of the USA and Canada..The TUC opposed this move, fearing it would
mean higher food prices than was necessary for the working family; an echo of
the Corn Laws of a century earlier.Innovations such as frozen food, freezer ships to bring meat from the
furthest parts of the world to Europe, all helped boost the efficiency of the
food supply chain, reduce food wastage through food spoilage, and boost the
total population of Europe and the world that could be fed by the agricultural
sector.

World War Two, with a more efficient German blockade against
food imports to Britain, showed that the era of wars had not come to an end and
that Britain was vulnerable to siege just as much as the mediaeval castles had
been of centuries earlier.Rationing saw
the country through, as did a ‘dig for victory’ campaign, involving home
production of food wherever it could be grown, from back gardens and parks to
sports fields and the open grasslands of the Downs.Much unimproved grassland was ploughed up, and
an era of subsidies to farms began., Farmers were incentivised by government
grants to introduce technology, raise food production, and raise yields by
grubbing up less productive land taken up by hedges and meadows and growing
crops.Technology ruled the day, as
fertilisers from oil came on stream, farm machinery such as tractors and balers
developed, and intensive rearing of farm animals in indoor barns, battery
chickens and cows, began.

Post-War Europe

After this second World War less than thirty years after the
supposed ‘war to end all wars’, a major effort was made by the USA and by
Europe itself, to prevent a third such War.The USA oversaw the pulling together of western Europe into what is now
the European Union (EU).Meanwhile the
Soviet Union pulled its (eastern) half of the continent into a buffer zone
against another invasion from the west, this zone being known as the Warsaw
Pact countries.The European Economic
Community, or EEC as it was then known before it evolved into the EU, boosted
agriculture by subsidies to farmers.The
aim was to help impoverished rural areas, to feed an industrialised continent
whose riches farmlands lay beyond the Iron Curtain in the Warsaw Pact, and to
preserve the countryside as a food production and recreation facility.The EEC did finally bring a long period of
peace to western Europe, and the prosperity that brought enable Europeans to
catch up with Americans on material goods.Europeans began to travel abroad, and to demand new exotic foreign
foods. Increased spending power in the
UK and the rest of Europe facilitated the growth of supermarkets dependent on
car access and bulk buying, and the sales of value added foods and luxury
goods, not just necessities.

In the 1950s fish and chips was still the UK’s favourite
dish but meals such as spaghetti Bolognese from Italy and Paella from Spain were
becoming more common, tastes brought to the UK by holidaymakers to the ‘sun,
sea, and sand’ destinations of the Mediterranean.Findus and Birds Eye were delivering frozen
foods to UK shops. These meals had been
on sale in the USA before the Second World War but as with many retailing
innovations (e.g. self service, supermarkets) their arrival in the UK was
delayed by the less developed state of the UK economy compared to the USA’s. Food
rationing in the UK persisted until the 1950s.In the 1960s meat and sugar consumption in
the UK rose sharply, after years of rationing, as the economy began to recover.

Technology and social
change from the 1960s onwards

The 1960s and 70s
were an age of techno-optimism compared to the early 21st century
where technology in the area of food is generally distrusted, e.g. GM
foods, artificial flavourings and colourings. This was the age of Smash powdered mashed
potatoes, advertised by smiley robot aliens who laughed at primitive Earthlings
who still peeled potatoes. The
advertisement for this ran in 1973. Boil
in the bag fish also arrived at this time. Cookery programmes on TV became popular, and
UK tastes became more international, demanding pizzas, pasta, German meats and
yoghurts, French cheeses, and American ice cream.

The 1980s saw moreworking mothers. Households where both parents worked became more
common, and also single parent households. Social mobility and a looser code of morals
had increased the divorce rate.The
1980s saw rise in house prices, necessitating a double income for many
households in order to be able to afford to buy a house.Women became keener on entering the workforce
and achieving equality with men, a process that was started by the shortage eon
manpower in the two World Wars, so women had to go to work on the Home Front to
replace the men away fighting.

This promoted a trend towards fast food and ready meals,
andcooking skills declined, as cook-chill technology improved and the
range of ready-meals widened. By
1999 the average time spent preparing a meal had fallen to 20 minutes, from 60
minutes in 1980, as we increasingly bought ready meals from supermarkets. By
now food tastes had expanded widely beyond Europe, to Indian, Chinese, and even
Thai foods. This cosmopolitanisation of
the nation’s palate was driven by more exotic foreign holidays as well
as increasing immigration of ethnic minorities to the UK. In the 1990s, less than half of cook-chill
recipes were British; over half were Indian or Chinese.

Demographic changes
in the UK in the 21st century

The UK has seen major demographic changes since 2000 which
have impacted on the food industry.The
demand for healthy yet fast convenience microwave food has continued as work
hours and a demand for leisure or ‘me time’ have eroded willingness to
cook.The EU has expanded to cover 10
new countries in 2004, 8 of these former Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland
and Hungary.Two further former Soviet
Bloc countries, Romania and Bulgaria, joined in 2007.This expansion was made possible by the
collapse of Communism in Russia and eastern Europe from 1989 onwards; a
collapse which increased political instability in the Middle East and other
regions.This has increased the flow of
migrants to the UK and other western EU countries, increasing the diversity of
both food retail outlets and food demand within the UK.